Solomon Mahlangu Scholarship Fund for Young South Africans 2018

Application Deadline: 

• Applications (online and manual) for the 2018 academic year will open on 18th September 2017.
• Applications close on the 15th December 2017 (for postal/email applications) and the 16th January 2018 for online applications.

Eligible Countries: South Africa

To be taken at (country): South Africa

Eligible Field of Study: Full-time degrees that fall within the priority growth sectors, critical and scarce skills areas outlined in the labour planning framework of the country.Full-time degrees that fall within the priority growth sectors, critical and scarce skills areas outlined in the labour planning framework of the country.

About the Award: In its quest to address the challenge of youth unemployment, access to education, among many other challenges, the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) changed its core business to focus on education and skills development as the organisation’s main priority. This move was informed by studies which suggested that salary remains the main source of income for young South Africans.

The Solomon Mahlangu scholarship fund was established in honour of Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu who at the age of 23, was executed under the apartheid laws after being wrongfully accused of murder and terrorism. Fearing crowd reaction at the funeral, police decided to bury Mahlangu in Atteridgeville, Pretoria.
The scholarship fund is designed to create an environment for affording youth with excellent academic background, an opportunity to further their studies. Financial support will be provided to youth who pursue full time degrees that fall within the priority growth sectors, critical and scarce skills areas outlined in the labor planning frameworks of the country.
The fund will be accessible to deserving South African youth who meet the minimum entry requirements set by the NYDA and, who have been admitted for study at public Universities and Universities of Technology

Type: Undergraduate

Eligibility: 

• Students must be applying for admission to one of the public universities as a 1st year full-time student in a priority study (see above).
• High school learners who plan to attend one of the public universities or university of technology after completing the National Senior Certificate
• Must meet University Admission Points Score (APS) and achieve an average of 70% in the NSC exams
• Must be South African citizens between 14 – 35
• Financial neediness – combined household salary of less than R15 000 a month
• Reside in rural/semi-rural areas

Number of Awardees: 150

Value of Scholarship: 

• Tuition
• Accommodation
• Meals
• Study Books

Duration of Scholarship: The Solomon Mahlangu Scholarship is awarded for the duration of studies

How to Apply: 

• CLICK HERE for online application.
• CLICK HERE to download application form for postal/email applications
• It is the responsibility of the applicant to fully complete the online application form.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: National Youth Development Agency (NYDA)

Important Notes: 

• Application does not automatically mean acceptance; a selection will be made of students to be covered by the scholarship programme.  Application does not automatically mean acceptance; a selection will be made of students to be covered by the scholarship programme.
• NO late applications will be considered.

PEO International Peace Scholarships for Women to Study in USA and Canada 2018/2019

Application Timeline: 

• Application Opens: 15th September, 2017
• Application closes: 15th December, 2017
• March 1, 2018: Last day to submit completed application materials from applicants already enrolled in the graduate program and school for which their scholarship is intended.
• April 1, 2018: Last day to submit completed application materials from applicants not yet enrolled in the graduate program or school for which the scholarship is intended. Last day to submit completed application materials for applicants who will be attending Cottey College
• May 2018: Notification of scholarship awards
• June 1, 2018: Last day for students to accept IPS scholarships

Offered Annually: Yes

About the Award: Members of P.E.O. believe that education is fundamental to world peace and understanding. The scholarship is based upon demonstrated need; however, the award is not intended to cover all academic or personal expenses.

Eligibility and Criteria

• An applicant must be qualified for admission to full-time graduate study and working toward a graduate degree in an accredited college or university in the united States or canada.
• A student who is a citizen or permanent resident of the United States or Canada is not eligible.
• Scholarships are not given for research, internships, or practical training, unless it is combined with coursework. Awards are not to be used to pay past debts.
• In order to qualify for her first scholarship, an applicant must have a full year of coursework remaining, be enrolled and in residence for the entire school year.
• Doctoral students who have completed coursework and are working only on dissertations are not eligible as first-time applicants.
• international students attending cottey college are eligible to apply for a scholarship.

Scholarship Worth

• The maximum amount awarded to a student is $12,500. Lesser amounts may be awarded according to individual needs.
• The scholarship is based upon demonstrated financial need; however, the award is not intended to cover all academic or personal expenses. At the time of application, the applicant is required to confirm additional financial resources adequate to meet her estimated expenses. Additional resources may include personal and family funds, tuition waivers, work scholarships, teaching assistantships, study grants and other scholarships.
• Awards are announced in May. The amount of the PEO International scholarship will be divided into two payments to be distributed in August and December

Application Guideline and Procedures

• Information concerning the international peace Scholarship program is available from the P.E.O. Executive Office or from the website at peointernational.org.
• Eligibility must be established before application material is made available. Eligibility information and application deadlines can be found at any time on the P.E.O. website.
• Information concerning admission to Cottey college may be obtained by writing to the coordinator of Admissions, Cottey College, Nevada, Missouri 64772, or visit them at cottey.edu.

Awards are announced in May. The amount of the scholarship will be divided into two payments to be distributed in August and December.

Visit P.E.O. International Peace Scholarship Fund Information

DAAD Doctoral Training Scholarship for Ghanaian Students 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 31st October, 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Ghana

To be taken at (country): Germany

Eligible Field of Study: Science related fields

About the Award: The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Scholarships Secretariat is inviting applications from Ghanaian students to pursue doctoral training programme.

Type: PhD

Eligibility: 

• Must be a Ghanaian citizen resident in Ghana.
• Must be a teaching staff of a Public or accredited private Tertiary University or Polytechnic.
• Be a first Degree holder with 2nd Class Upper division or First Class
• Must hold Masters degree equivalent to B+ grade or above
• Should have a National Service certificate
• The Masters degree generally should not be more than six (6) years at the last time of graduation.
• Should not be more than 45 years
• Should be willing to learn the German Language

Number of Awardees: Not stated

Value of Scholarship: These grants are normally offered within the scope of:

a) Research Grants for Doctoral Candidates and Young Academics and Scientists
d) Summer course grants

Duration of Scholarship: 3 Years

How to Apply:  The candidates shall submit a complete application consisting of:

• Curriculum Vitae
• Research proposal (not more than 10 pages) including a detailed time table.
• Should have secured admission with a recognized German University and develop research proposal with a would-be German Supervisor.

Interested applicants should submit their applications and the above mentioned requirements to the address indicated below not later than 31st October, 2017.

 THE REGISTRAR

SCHOLARSHIPS SECRETARIAT

P. O. BOX M. 75

ACCRA

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: DAAD, Ghana Ministry of Education

Important Notes: Please NOTE that only shortlisted applicants would be contacted.

Government of Germany DAAD Scholarships for Artists and Filmmakers (Fully-funded) 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 31st October 2017

Offered Annually? Yes

To Be Taken At (Country): Germany         

Type: Short courses/Training

Eligibility: As a rule, scholarships for attendance of a course of extension studies are awarded to applicants who have exhausted the training possibilities available to them in their home country and have – as far as possible – concluded these studies with an appropriate degree. No more than six years should generally have passed between the time when they gained their degree and the time of this application.

Applicants who have been residents in Germany for longer than one year at the time of application cannot be considered.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The DAAD will pay a monthly scholarship of 750 Euros. As a rule, the scholarship additionally includes certain payments towards health insurance cover in Germany. In addition, the DAAD generally will pay an appropriate flat-rate travel allowance, unless these costs are covered by the home country or by another funding source. Furthermore, the DAAD will pay a study allowance and, where appropriate, a rent subsidy and family allowance.

Duration of Program: Study scholarships are generally awarded for one academic year. In individual cases and upon application, scholarships may be extended.

How to Apply: 

• Applications need to be submitted online.
• In addition,special leaflets for the fields of Fine Art, Design and Film, for Music and for Drama, Direction, Dance and Choreography provide information on aspects such as the work samples (portfolio) which applicants need to submit.
• The DAAD will not consider incomplete applications!

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)

World Citizenship Is More Popular Than You Might Think

Lawrence S. Wittner

Has nationalism captured the hearts and minds of the world’s people?

It certainly seems to have emerged as a powerful force in recent years.  Trumpeting their alleged national superiority and hatred of foreigners, political parties on the far right have made their biggest political advances since the 1930s.  After the far right’s startling success, in June 2016, in getting a majority of British voters to endorse Brexit―British withdrawal from the European Union (EU)―even mainstream conservative parties began to adopt a chauvinist approach.  Using her Conservative Party conference to rally support for leaving the EU, British Prime Minister Theresa May declared contemptuously: “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.”

The tilt toward an aggressive nationalism was particularly evident in the United States, where Donald Trump―amid chants of “USA, USA” from his fervent supporters―promised to “make America great again” by building a wall to block Mexicans, barring the entry of Muslims to the United States, and expanding U.S. military might.  Following his surprise election victory, Trump told a rally in December 2016:  “There is no global anthem.  No global currency.  No certificate of global citizenship.  We pledge allegiance to one flag and that flag is the American flag.”  After wild cheering from the crowd, he added: “From now on it is going to be:  America First.  Okay?  America first.  We’re going to put ourselves first.”

But the nationalists suffered some major setbacks in 2017.  In elections that March in the Netherlands, the xenophobic Party for Freedom, though given a chance at victory by political pundits, was soundly defeated.  Much the same happened in France, where, that May, a political newcomer, Emmanuel Macron, trounced Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the far right National Front, in an election for the presidency by a 2-to-1 vote.  A month later, in parliamentary elections, Macron’s new party and its allies won 350 seats in the 577-member National Assembly, while the National Front won only 9.  In Britain, Theresa May, confident that her new, hard line on Brexit and divisions in the opposition Labour Party would produce huge gains for her Conservative Party, called for a snap election in June.  But, to the shock of observers, the Tories lost seats, as well as their parliamentary majority.  Meanwhile, in the United States, Trump’s policies produced a vast wave of public resistance, his approval ratings in opinion polls sank to levels unprecedented for a new President, and he was forced to purge Steve Bannon―the top nationalist ideologue in his election campaign and in his administration―from the White House.

Although a variety of factors contributed to the nationalist defeats, widespread internationalist views certainly played a role.  During Macron’s presidential campaign, he repeatedly assailed the narrow-minded nationalism of the National Front, projecting instead an internationalist vision of a united Europe with open borders.  In Britain, May’s fervent support for Brexit backfired among the public, especially internationally-minded youth.

Indeed, over the centuries cosmopolitan values have become a strong current in public opinion.  They are usually traced to Diogenes, a philosopher of Classical Greece, who, asked where he came from, replied: “I am a citizen of the world.”  The idea gained increased currency with the spread of Enlightenment thinking.  Tom Paine, considered one of America’s Founding Fathers, took up the theme of a loyalty to all humanity in his Rights of Man (1791), proclaiming:  “My country is the world.”  Similar sentiments were expressed in later years by William Lloyd Garrison (“My country is the world; my countrymen are all mankind”), Albert Einstein, and a host of other globalist thinkers.  After the Second World War brought the nation-state system to the brink of collapse, a massive social movement developed around the idea of “One World,” with world citizenship campaigns and world federalist organizations attaining substantial popularity around the globe.  Although the movement declined with the onset of the Cold War, its core assumption of the primacy of the world community persisted in the form of the United Nations and of worldwide campaigns for peace, human rights, and environmental protection.

As a result, even as a nationalist frenzy has erupted in recent years, opinion surveys have reported a very strong level of support for its antithesis:  world citizenship.  A poll of more than 20,000 people in 18 countries, conducted by GlobeScan for the BBC World Service from December 2015 through April 2016, found that 51 percent of respondents saw themselves more as global citizens than as citizens of their own countries.  This was the first time since tracking began in 2001 that a majority felt this way.

Even in the United States, where slightly fewer than half of the respondents identified themselves as global citizens, Trump’s hyper-nationalist campaign attracted only 46 percent of the votes cast for President, thus providing him with almost three million fewer votes than secured by his Democratic opponent.  Furthermore, opinion polls before and since the election revealed that most Americans opposed Trump’s best-known and most vehemently-supported “America First” program―building a border wall between the United States and Mexico.  When it came to immigration issues, a Quinnipiac University survey taken in early February 2017 found that 51 percent of American voters opposed Trump’s executive order suspending travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries, 60 percent opposed suspending all refugee programs, and 70 percent opposed indefinitely barring Syrian refugees from emigrating to the United States.

Overall, then, most people around the world―including most people in the United States―are not zealous nationalists.  In fact, they display a remarkable level of support for moving beyond the nation-state to world citizenship.

Too Late, Mr. Modi

RADHA SURYA

The sightseeing at Ahmedabad’s famous Sidi Saiyyed mosque by Prime Minister Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was carefully choreographed. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife planned to visit India to attend the 11th Indo-Japan summit to be held in September.  Government officials had worked around the clock the previous month to ensure that the mosque was displayed to advantage to guests from a developed country.  It was important to ensure that the lighting was just right for a perfect shot of the visitors with the mosque in the background.  That was not all.  PM Modi’s office had contacted the board that ran the mosque for information on the history and architecture of the 16th century structure.  The PM internalized the information and himself served as tour guide when he accompanied his distinguished guest to the mosque.  This was no ordinary mosque.  The iconic edifice has been described as evidence of historical fruition of Gujarat’s multiculturalism, a testimony to Hindu and Muslim cultures coming together in the past to create structures of ever-lasting beauty and significance.

Doubtless PM Modi pulled off an excellent performance in his capacity of tour guide for an edifice that stands as visual evidence of the syncretic nature of India’s cultural heritage.  Presumably Prime Minister Abe was completely taken in.  Introduced by such an affable, articulate and appreciative guide to the exquisite stone lattice work of the mosque and the fabulous tree of life lattice window, the foreign dignitary must have remained unaware that PM Modi had not once visited the mosque as Chief Minister of Gujarat although he had ruled the state from 2002-2014.  The erstwhile Gujarat Chief Minister’s unwillingness to have anything to do with the Sidi Saiyyed mosque is unsurprising.  The trajectory which led to his coronation in 2014 as Prime Minister of India began with his becoming a member early in life of the Hindu supremacist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) which was founded in the 1920’s and drew inspiration from the leaders of European fascism and their methods.

The RSS disseminates its own version of Indian history which is fixated on the Muslim invasions of the Indian subcontinent that took place early in the second millennium.  A second invasion in 1526 led to the establishment of the Mughal Empire.  The RSS perspective on Indian history generates unremitting hatred that is vented on Muslims of the present day.   In their blindness to the contours of world history through the centuries and entrapment in a narrow-minded time warp, the RSS and its adherents are unable to acknowledge that the erstwhile invaders settled in India and became an integral part of the population.    Hence the big surprise for observers of the anti-Muslim, Hindu chauvinist and supremacist PM Modi lies in his showcasing for the benefit of his distinguished guest a mosque built by the hated “invader.”  Therein lies the rub.

How does one explain this seeming turnaround on the part of PM Modi better known for the politics of polarization on the basis of religious identity, for disregarding the rights and sensitivities of India’s Muslim citizens and for fanning the majority Hindu community’s ordinarily dormant feelings of hatred toward a vulnerable minority?  The answer may lie in the single word lynchistan which has increasingly come to be used in relation to PM Modi’s India.  The term refers to the cold-blooded lynching of innocent and defenseless Muslims by murderous mobs of right-wing extremists.  The first of these killings took place in June 2014 soon after PM Modi was crowned in New Delhi.  At first the killings were few and far between—a lynching here and a lynching there.  For the most part the PM turned a blind eye to the crimes that were being perpetrated on his watch.  The ordinarily eloquent Prime Minister was evasive and less than convincing on the rare occasions when he gave in and condemned the lynchings.

By the time PM Modi had completed his third year in office in May 2017 the maniacal mobs were emboldened by the impunity extended to their hate crimes.  Their blood lust took on an uncontrollable momentum.  Finally the PM spoke in forceful language .  By then the rampaging mobs were familiar with the sadistic pleasures of killing helpless Muslims at will and could not be stopped.  The reputed data intensive web site IndiaSpend has documented that this year alone 34 anti-Muslim hate crimes have been committed so far.  “There were three incidents in 2014, the year Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party won India.  Nine months into 2017, such hate crimes have risen more than 10-fold.”  Not all hate crimes result in murder.  “Lesser” incidents may have such consequences as an old man living in fear, the bones in his hand crushed from a ruthless beating and his home burned to cinders.

India today is a country where Mohammed Akhlaq, Pehlu Khan, Junaid Khan and others too numerous to mention haunt the land and clamor with dumb mouths for a modicum of justice.  Seventeen year old Junaid Khan was stabbed to death in a commuter train as he was returning from Eid shopping in Delhi.  His offence was wearing traditional garb that proclaimed his Muslim identity.  As India is consumed by medieval hatreds, as the ground is stained by the blood of innocent Muslims, believers in Nehruvian and Gandhian India, leftist or liberal, broad-minded, tolerant, democratic, inclusive and justice loving watch in anguish and seek to stem the tide of hatred.  On September 12 they rallied in their thousands in Bengaluru to condemn the murder of the courageous, anti-RSS journalist Gauri Lankesh, the most recent victim of right wing extremism.  Some rushed to staunch the bleeding.  At this time karwan-e-mohabbat (karwanemohabbat.in) or caravan of love led by well-known rights activist and writer Harsh Mander has embarked on a journey that will cover the parts of India that are worst affected by lynchings.  “The major aim of the Karwan will be to visit families which have suffered from lynch attacks to offer our atonement and solidarity.  In each state, we will assess how the family is coping and what they need for livelihoods and the pursuit of justice.”

Saffron is the color of the ruling party Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP.  One can plausibly speculate that the tidal wave of saffron bigotry and saffron terror coursing headlong through India serves as the background against which PM Modi’s visit with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Sidi Saiyyed Mosque can be best understood.  PM Modi’s mental make-up is one in which the quest for modernity co-exists with medieval hatreds and unscientific thinking.  In Israel he woos Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and seeks the latest water purification technology.  In Japan he pursues civil nuclear cooperation.  PM Modi’s “modern” side is also apparent in his attentiveness to his image particularly in the international media.  With the foreign media carrying a spate of stories on lynchings of Muslims and most recently the murder by suspected saffron extremists of Gauri Lankesh, the spunky, irrepressible journalist who had repeatedly condemned RSS ideology and the PM’s politics, India under Modi has become known internationally as a retrograde country where maniacal mobs hold sway and murder with impunity.  In other words the Prime Minister’s image has taken a beating.

With respect to India the PM is on safe ground.  As Assembly elections come up in state after state, the PM will swing into campaign mode and sway the electorate with his usual oratorial tricks.  The electoral dominance of the ruling party will continue to expand across former non-BJP ruled states.  On the domestic front the PM can get away with murder thanks to adroit spin and an ineffective Parliamentary Opposition.  He only has to await his second coronation in 2019.   On the international front on the other hand it is a different story.  Here the PM had best accept that the image battle has been lost.  The stories of mob lynchings have been carried by the leading news media including the BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian and others.  No power on earth will scrub the stories from the internet.  It’s too late for an image makeover PM Modi.  You can visit mosques and showcase India’s composite cultural heritage all you want but you cannot hoodwink the correspondents of the international media.  Best to stop trying.

Logging Won’t Stop Wildfires

Chad Hanson & Mike Garrity

A number of politicians have promised to weaken environmental laws and increase logging, supposedly to stop forest fires. Here’s what they aren’t telling you.

Fires, including large fires, are a natural and ecologically necessary part of forests in the Northern Rockies. Dozens of plant and animal species, such as the black-backed Woodpecker, depend upon post-fire habitat—including patches of forest where fire burns hotter and kills most trees—due to the abundance of standing dead trees, downed logs, flowering plants, and natural regeneration of trees, which provide both food and homes for fire-dependent insects and wildlife. In fact, the “snag forest habitat” created by patches of intense fire is comparable to old-growth forest in terms of native biodiversity and wildlife abundance. Fires do not destroy forests, and forests are not “lost” when fires burn; rather, they are restored and rejuvenated.

This year is by no means a record fire year in Montana’s forests. Historically, there was generally more, not less, fire than there is now. Fire is as natural, essential, and inevitable in Montana’s forests as rain, snow, wind, and sun. Given this, there is no sound scientific reason to attempt to further reduce or eliminate fire from these forests, and logging does not lead to that result anyway.

Last year, in the largest analysis of fire intensity and logging ever conducted in Western U.S. conifer forests, scientists found that, in every region, including the Northern Rockies, the forests where the most logging is allowed tended to burn the most intensely, while the most protected forests had overall lower intensity, but still had an ecologically healthy mix of fire intensities.

Proponents of logging claim that, since logging removes trees, it reduces forest density and removes “fuels” from the forest. Not really. The material that allows fires to spread in forests is very small — branches, twigs, and pine needles. Tree trunks are relatively non-combustible. When logging removes trees, it leaves behind flammable “slash debris”, comprised of tree tops and branches that are not usable for lumber. This acts like kindling in forest fires. In addition, by removing much of the forest canopy cover, logging reduces the cooling shade that it otherwise provides, creating hotter, drier conditions on the forest floor, which can allow fire to spread faster.

We need to allow more lightning fires to burn, without trying to suppress them, in more remote forests, while focusing our resources on protecting homes and communities from fire, including creating defensible space around homes and making homes themselves more fire safe.

The truth is that our forests need fire, and will always have it, and no amount of logging will change that. Forest ecosystems are not just live, green mature trees; they are also snags, downed logs, under-story trees, shrubs, and other flowering plants. This complexity is what allows forests to be ecologically healthy. Politicians who tell you that they can stop forest fires with fewer environmental protections and more logging are simply not being honest.

Hurricanes and the Blockade Against Cuba

Manuel E. Yepe

Although the blockade of Cuba officially began on February 7, 1962, in practice it began in 1959, barely after the triumph of the popular revolution against the pro-American dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The recent tragedy that Hurricane Irma has meant for Cuba and several other countries in the Caribbean reminded me of a discussion I had exactly ten years ago with an American friend visiting Cuba. He maintained that Fidel Castro should be grateful to the US government for the blockade it had imposed on Cuba for half a century.

In that American friend’s opinion, it would have been extremely difficult, almost impossible, for Cubans to maintain the unity in action they have shown for the achievement of their great social, cultural, educational, scientific and economic advances, “had there not been the ferocious and stupid hostility against the island” of its powerful northern neighbor.

For this reason, he speculated, the Cuban government has acted very cleverly by not doing everything in its power to get the United States to suspend the economic blockade and normalize its relations with the island.

I argued against such speculation. I reminded him of the staunch position of the Cuban government against the blockade, the promotion it has been making for many years in favor of international agreements condemning it and Cuba’s permanent willingness to negotiate fairly all disputes with Washington.

It is unquestionable, I remarked, that the persistent pursuit of a dozen successive US governments of the blockade against Cuba has contributed to national unity. Similarly with Washington’s its policy of open and covert threats and aggressions. These have promoted Cuba’s popular unity policy which has, in turn, served to encourage the enthusiastic support of the population to the Revolution’s political project.

Similarly, hurricanes provide significant benefits through the torrential rains that enrich the water table, fill the reservoirs, and even renew the forests by knocking down old trees. Alas, their aftermath also strongly harms the population, with great damage caused by their wind, rain, tides and sea waves for the sake of such presumably beneficial effects.

Cuba is frequently hit by the powerful hurricanes that characterize its geographic location. Sometimes they do it with very short intervals to allow an effective recovery, but, every time this happens, I remember this exchange with my American friend.

Cubans are proud to belong to a people that offers such extraordinary demonstrations of unity, discipline, solidarity and creativity in facing these natural phenomena. Our avoidance of fatalities and intangible material effects, compared to other countries that do not have a similar organization based on solidarity, is a source of our pride.

I cannot avoid comparing this action by Cubans, which this people demonstrates in confrontation with the effects of the blockade, and against the hostility that the US has practiced against Cuba for almost 60 years.

Hurricanes bring water for sowing and dams; the blockade contributes to the firmness of the agreement by Cubans for national defense. But when one considers the magnitude of the material damage, the suffering, and the  scourge that flows from the hurricanes and the blockade, everyone understands why hurricanes are so undesirable.

I hope meteorological science will someday be able to dissolve or divert hurricanes to uninhabited places. And that scientists will find ways and means to obtain the water they provide by other means.

Until that happens, it would be desirable if good sense moves the government of the United States to reject the blockade that it has exercised against Cuba.

Cubans will be able to find and improve –on increasingly democratic and permanent foundations– the mechanisms necessary to make the revolutionary project dreamed by Marti and Bolivar for our America irreversible.

Unfortunately for Cubans, to return to normalization after Irma’s devastating atmospheric phenomenon, also means living again under the conditions of the no less-devastating criminal phenomenon that is the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba in its useless effort by to make the island return to the imperialist fold.

ISIS is Stepping Up Its Atrocities to Compensate For Its Defeat

Patrick Cockburn

Isis is the most likely inspiration for the bomb explosion on the tube train at Parsons Green station. The attempted mass killing is similar to the attacks in Barcelona, Manchester and London earlier this year in that it aimed to murder the maximum number of civilians in the most public way possible.

Isis is stepping up its attention-grabbing atrocities to counterbalance its defeats on the battlefields in Iraq and Syria. It aims to show strength, instil fear and dominate the news agenda at a time when it has lost the savage nine-month-long struggle for Mosul in Iraq and is being defeated in the battle for its last big urban centres in Deir Ezzor and Raqqa in Syria. The caliphate that Isis declared after its capture of Mosul in 2014, once the size of Great Britain, is today reduced to a few embattled enclaves in the deserts of eastern Syria and western Iraq.

Unfortunately, these defeats make escalating terrorist attacks on civilians more rather than less likely in Iraq, Syria and the West. I am listing the locations being targeted in that order because the great majority of Isis’s victims are Iraqis and Syrians, though this receives scant coverage in the western media which carries 24/7 reportage of Isis-related incidents in Western Europe and the US.

A telling example of this lopsided coverage came this week only a day before the Parsons Green explosion, when Isis gunmen and three suicide bombers attacked a police checkpoint and two restaurants in southern Iraq, killing at least 80 people and injuring hundreds more. Wearing police uniforms and driving captured Iraqi army vehicles, the Isis fighters made their attack on the main road between Baghdad and Basra near the city of Nassiriya. The carefully organised assault was carried out deep inside part of Iraq that is Shia and far from the remaining Isis strongholds in Sunni Arab districts further north. The aim was to prove that, despite its shattering losses in the siege of Mosul, Isis can still operate far from its base areas.

The British Government and public have never quite taken on board that Isis terrorist attacks in Britain and elsewhere are part and parcel of what is happening in the wars in Iraq and Syria. Isis sees the world as a single battlefield. That is why Government initiatives like the “Prevent” campaign are an irrelevance where they are not counterproductive. They purport to identify and expose signs of domestic Islamic radicalism (though nobody knows what these are), but in practice they are a form of collective punishment of the three million British Muslims, serving only to alienate many and push a tiny minority towards sympathy for Isis and al-Qaeda-linked movements.

Such an approach is attractive to governments because it shows them doing something active to quell terrorism, however ineffectual this may be. It also has the useful implication of suggesting that terrorism is domestically generated and that the British foreign ventures in Libya in 2003 and Libya in 2011 were in no way responsible for providing the breeding grounds in which Isis was nurtured. Yet when Jeremy Corbyn suggested after the Manchester bomb that a government policy that had helped produce anarchy in Iraq, Libya and Syria, enabling al-Qaeda-type terrorists to flourish, had much to answer for, he was howled down and execrated as somehow lessening the guilt of the Manchester and London attackers.

The only long-term way of preventing these terrorist attacks is not only to eliminate Isis in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere but to end these wars which have allowed al-Qaeda to become a mass movement. Prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, al-Qaeda and its clones had little strength and had been largely broken up. They were resurrected during the Iraq war, were suppressed with immense difficulty only to rise again in 2011, when the civil war in Syria enabled them to spread and become the dominant force in the armed opposition. This was neither inevitable nor unforeseeable: Iraqi leaders warned that a continuing war in Syria, in which sectarian confrontation was a major factor, would destabilise their own fragile peace. They were ignored and the meteoric emergence of Isis between 2011 and 2014 showed that they knew what they were talking about. I remember in 2012 vainly trying to persuade a senior diplomat that if the war in Syria continued, it could not be contained and would destabilise Iraq. He poo-pooed my fears as exaggerated.

Western powers only truly took on board that the defeat of Isis had to be given total priority in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015 and the outpouring of Syrian refugees heading from Turkey to Western Europe in the same year. Previously, the governments had been laggard in seeking to carry out such obvious measures as putting pressure on Turkey to close its open border with Syria, across which al-Qaeda and Isis recruits passed unhindered for years. In the event, it was only gradually closed by the advance of the Syrian Kurds along the south side of the Syrian-Kurdish border.

But it is not just the defeat of Isis and al-Qaeda (thinly disguised by frequent changes of name) that is necessary. It is the wars in Iraq and Syria that provided the fertile soil for movements to grow again. Anything that delays the end of these conflicts contributes to the survival of Isis and groups for which the massacre of civilians is an integral part of their day-to-day tactics.

British and other western governments protest that they do indeed want to end the war, but they have pursued policies that have fuelled it and made its continuation inevitable. They declared that the removal of President Bashar al-Assad was a precondition for peace when the political and military balance of power in Syria made this extremely unlikely. Critics of government policy who pointed this out were denounced as pro-Assad sympathisers. Western policy was a self-defeating mix of fantasy and wishful thinking and fantasy. Remember David Cameron’s non-existent 70,000 moderate fighters, brave fellows who were going to take on Assad and Isis at the same time?

Not all the news is bad: Isis is being defeated in both Syria and Iraq. Its ability to organise and inspire terrorist attacks is going down. Assuming Isis was behind the bomb on the train in Parsons Green, there is some comfort in the fact that it failed to explode fully – an Isis bomb in Catalonia blew up those that were making it. Money, weapons and expertise will be more difficult to supply.

But the weaker Isis becomes the more it will want to show that it is still in business. Attacks in two places as different as Nassiriya and Parsons Green within 24 hours of each other shows that it is a long way from being eradicated. At the end of the day peace in the UK and Europe is indivisible from peace in Iraq and Syria.

Why Would 58% Favor U.S. Bombing of North Korea?

Gary Leupp

A new Gallup poll indicates the 58% of U.S. residents polled say they favor U.S. military action against North Korea if the U.S. “cannot accomplish its goals by more peaceful means first.” Like most polls it is tendentiously worded.

What are “its goals”? U.S. goals? What national, discussed and decided, “goals” do we have (as a nation) as regards the Korean peninsula?

I’m actually a U.S. citizen and a specialist in East Asian history. Frankly, I know a lot about Korea. But I was never consulted about those “goals.”

In the past the goals have included “defeating” North Korea; remember how Dick Cheney and John Bolton said the U.S. doesn’t negotiate with “evil” but defeats it? (But aren’t these guys long-discredited assholes, to anyone paying attention?)

Gallup ought to have asked its respondents: Would you favor U.S. military action of Korea, if it doesn’t stop its nuclear weapons program, which North Korea says is designed to protect it from U.S. attack?

The corporate media is telling the people that Pyongyang has to back down on its goal of a nuclear program (for deterrence purposes) or face more (vaguely conceptualized) consequences. It is stoking the traditional American penchant for wild violence in response to any remote threat, and the unique 21st century tactic of using weapons of mass destruction fears to legitimate regime change imposed by the country with the most weapons of mass destruction on earth, and the most experience in their use.

Meanwhile this cherished CNN reporter (with unique unprecedented exposure to North Korea) Will Ripley is reporting (in his vaunted documentary to air Saturday night) that North Korea in contrast to “Western historians” blames the Korean War (1950-1953) on the United States.

Tokyo-based Ripley’s the crème de la crème of mainstream DPRK reportage. He interviews teenage kids practicing militaristic video games indicating the U.S. as adversary—as though this were somehow troubling and hard to comprehend.

He might not know that the best Western historians on Korea (including most notably Bruce Cumings) do in fact blame the Korean War mostly on the U.S. Because that’s the truth.

The U.S. opposed the reunification of Korea after its partition in 1945. It installed in power its puppet Synghman Rhee, who alarmed Congress by his vicious repression and threats to invade the north. The north’s push into the south in June 1950 (which actually received widespread support in the south) could have resulted in the rapid reunification of the country and its final attainment of independence from imperialist overlords.

Instead it was met with a horrific, racist assault that killed three million Korean people and rendered the peninsula a moonscape.

Will Ripley raises his eyebrows in surprise that, gosh, these Pyongyang teenagers hate us!
They are raised in a climate of hate!

(Gosh, what reasonable children would hate a country, just because it attacked it, bombed the hell out of it, and killed a third of its people? Why bear such a grudge?)

So while affecting an air of dispassionate objectivity (and—as advertised—deep awareness, given his multiple trips to Pyongyang) Ripley treats the main thing (the ferocious violence inflicted by the U.S. historically on Korea) as a footnote, and the secondary thing (the DPRK’s deterrence measures, and the people’s annoying historical memory) as the big news story.

Totally out of historical context. Trump-era imperialist journalism at its slickest.

The Saudi Project Has Failed

Rannie Amiri

Books will be written on the designs of the Saudi regime to reshape the greater Middle East. Entire chapters could be dedicated to the depth of United States and Israeli involvement and their shared partnership with the House of Saud and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states to do so. The titles may even stipulate it as a Saudi-U.S.-Israeli Project for emphasis. That said, the role played by Saudi Arabia within this alliance is not insignificant.

The undertaking has directly touched nearly a half-dozen Arab countries, unified largely by their common effort to resist the import of radical, extremist groups unleashed in retribution for not abiding by the diktats of the Gulf dynasties. Others opposed monarchical rule, their royal proxies or a Saudi-directed foreign policy and attempts to impose a uniform media narrative.

The scope of such a discussion is certainly worthy of a comprehensive and detailed analysis but only a summation is given here. Consider it the last page of the last section of the last chapter.

The Saudi Project has failed. Utterly.

Iraq

With the fall of Saddam Hussein, alarm bells sounded in Riyadh and other GCC capitals. He was an unpredictable ally yet one perceived to be adept at stemming ostensible Iranian and hence (according to the sectarian mindset), Shia influence from reaching the Arabian Peninsula. Many Gulf states have sizable Shia Arab populations, marginalized politically and socioeconomically particularly in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Suddenly, a popularly-elected government assumed power on their doorstep. Imperfect as it was, the Iraqi government reflected the demographics of the war-torn, Shia-majority country. The creation and rise of the Islamic State (IS) was part and parcel of their plan to make sure it would not succeed and indeed, implode. Islamic State funding came primarily from Saudi Arabia. Its Wahabi textbooks were published in the Kingdom. As the former imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca said, IS leaders, “draw their ideas from what is written in our own books, our own principles.” With the liberation of Mosul and the eviction of IS from other Iraqi cities, it was clear there would be no “caliphate” or return of an authoritarian, presumably Sunni, strongman to Baghdad. Banking on Iraqi exasperation with corruption, poor security and endless terrorist attacks, the people did not take the bait and turn on the government.

Syria

There is no greater example of the failure of the Saudi Project than in Syria. Syria is seen as the Arab conduit between Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, a key logistical player in the alternatively described “axis of Resistance” or “Shiite crescent.” Rival sponsorship of al-Qaeda and IS by Qatar and Saudi Arabia respectively, and infighting among all factions including the so-called “moderate” rebels backed by the U.S., was a part of its undoing.  Witnessing the abhorrent crimes committed by IS in Iraq and their country, the Syrian people also had no appetite or desire to play hosts to takfiri extremists. Neither the Sunni majority nor Christian and Alawite minorities saw the armed groups as a viable alternative to Bashar al-Assad. Islamic State has nearly been driven out of their stronghold in Raqqa and has already from the Lebanese-Syrian border region. The territory they do hold, as in Iraq, is rapidly dwindling. Assad, contrary to all initial predictions, remains firmly in power.

Bahrain

The al-Khalifa family’s intensified crackdown on human rights activists, religious figures and ordinary citizens protesting their absolute rule, the dismantlement of civil society and restrictions placed on free expression sends an important signal. Such measures, including revoking the nationality of citizens and imprisoning those who tweet on the regime’s abuses (as has been the fate of the indefatigable Nabeel Rajab), are unsustainable over the long-term. The will of the people has not been broken. They have yet to succumb to the fear the monarchy and its security services, renowed for their torture techniques, desperately want to instill. The despotism of the Saudi-backed regime has not halted the call by Bahrainis for equitable, representative government in the least.

Yemen

The humanitarian crisis Yemen is testament to the devastation brought about by the disastrous foray of Saudi forces into the poorest of Arab countries. The Houthis, a Zaidi political-religious movement, ousted Saudi-sponsored president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and assumed control of the capital in Sept. 2014. While Gulf and Western media would lead one to believe it was Iran who intervened and provided material support to the Houthis, there is little evidence of such. The ceaseless Saudi air campaign has so decimated Yemen that widespread malnutrition, famine and even cholera have emerged. But after three years, the Houthis have not been displaced from Sanaa and Hadi’s government has not been reinstated.

Qatar

It is ironic that one of the GCC states instrumental in fomenting discord and strife in Syria through support of al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups was not spared the intrigues of Saudi royals. Unable to tolerate independence from the leadership of King Salman and his designated successor, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, Qatar and its flagship news station Al Jazeera deviated from the program and went their own way. Whether by funding groups at odds with those backed by Riyadh or competing with the Saudi-owned media outlet Al Arabiya, Qatar was an outlier. Simply, it was not to be a subservient client state like Bahrain. Hence, an economic and travel blockade was imposed. In the face of the embargo, politically astute Qatar proved good relations with Turkey and Iran had its benefits. The emir was not deposed, Qatar survived economically and there is no indication they will bow to Riyadh’s list of demands anytime soon.

But the destruction wrought, the lives taken, the people displaced, the villages/towns/cities/provinces/countries destroyed, the refugee camps created, the misery inflicted, the Israeli occupation ignored, the sectarianism incited … the toll exacted by the failed Saudi Project for the Middle East is incalculable.

Remarkably, its success would have been even more catastrophic.